On a sunny Saturday towards the end of the 2018/19 season, an under-16s side from the Austrian club Donau Wien pitched up in Terenure College to play the school’s under-16s. Terenure’s current director of rugby and a long-standing stalwart of both club and school, Ian Morgan, was on the sidelines helping the home team.
“This is a funny one,” says Morgan, enjoying the memory of the Donau Wien outhalf getting the game under way. “Yeah, he took the kick-off and then ran up and caught it!” Morgan is not even sure if the kid in question didn’t score a try off his eye-catching opening gambit.
Also watching was Terenure’s junior cup coach, Sean Skehan. They were spellbound by the young outhalf; his running, passing and kicking penalties from halfway.
“He was ridiculously good,” recalls Morgan.
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What’s more, Caspar Gabriel was still shy of his 14th birthday but playing among boys who were two years his senior.
Afterwards, Donau Wien were hosted by Terenure RFC in Lakelands Park before going to a Leinster game. Morgan talked to Skehan and suggested: “Why doesn’t he come to the school? If he wants to be a rugby player, he can’t stay in Austria.”
So, they approached Gabriel and his father Thomas, who had helped arrange the games, to put the idea to father and son. They both quickly agreed to try it for a year.
“I just thought: ‘give it a crack’. I wasn’t thinking too much about it,” Gabriel said this week. “I was like: ‘Try it and if I don’t like it, just come back’.”
Cue one of the more unlikely stories in Irish rugby.
Gabriel moved to Dublin in 2019 and was put up by Morgan and his wife Paulene for a few months, moving in with their kids George, Heather and Rebecca. After the pandemic, Gabriel returned in 2021 to complete his Leaving Cert in Terenure.
The senior cup team didn’t tear up trees, and Gabriel’s learning curve wasn’t without its testing moments. He went off injured in a loss to St Michael’s after making what Morgan describes as “a ridiculously brave try-saving tackle in the corner.”
But Gabriel’s performances stood out sufficiently for him to be selected for the Leinster and Ireland under-19s. He’s now in his second year in the Leinster academy, making his senior debut in the province’s 50-26 win over Zebre last month.
There was talk of him being involved in Friday’s game away to the Dragons but instead he will be on the bench for Terenure against Clontarf at Castle Avenue on Saturday afternoon, a meeting of second and third.
This is good. Gabriel is a little unorthodox, something of a free spirit. He shouldn’t be over-coached, but needs nurturing and game time. Judging by his AIL displays last season and in Terenure’s wins this season away to Lansdowne and Ballynahinch, he is continually making strides. Ideally he gets 15 or so AIL games this season, for matches like Saturday’s against Clontarf are far more challenging affairs than, say, a recent Leinster-Munster A interpro which the 20-year-old lit up.
Gabriel now lives in in Goatstown with fellow academy players and training had over-run before he cycled in the rain to meet up for this interview.
Gabriel once told an Austrian journalist his rugby career was more important than his driving licence, but heading into another Irish winter he accepts that achieving both wouldn’t be a bad idea so he’s been studying for his theory test.
Gabriel doesn’t particularly like any of the hype around him. He won’t especially enjoy this piece. He’s always preferred to fly “under the radar”.
But the sky is the limit and helpfully he is humble and endearing, a mix of innocence and worldliness, for it can’t have been easy starting a new life in a foreign country with a different language away from family from the age of 14.
Gabriel actually played for Donau Wien in an under-12s game in Terenure two years before that day in 2019. Both mini tours had been arranged through Alan Field, universally known as Fuzzy in Terenure, where he now manages the second team, and who owns an Irish bar in Vienna called Flanagans.
“If you wanted to watch rugby matches, you went there,” says Gabriel. That’s how his dad and Fuzzy got to know each other before arranging those underage games.
His father Thomas managed to travel over for his five-minute Leinster debut against Zebre and post-match cap presentation, but not his mum, Kristin, and sister, Lina. All three had been over the week before for Gabriel’s 20th birthday, the same day he played in Leinster A’s draw with Munster As at Ollie Campbell Park, in which he beat three players to score a try from halfway.
Thomas played rugby and was president of both Donau Wien and the Austrian Rugby Federation.
“My dad always brought me to a rugby pitch when I was a baby and I started to play basically when I was able to walk and tumble around a bit.”
There was no mini rugby section.
“When we started off there was only three of us,” he recalls. Gradually more kids joined them at under-8s, under-10s and especially under-12s, and he remembers his first 15-a-side game being as a 14-year-old on the under-15s team.
So how did he acquire such a huge range with his left foot? “I’d say it’s just the long levers. I loved kicking when I was younger. I was always in the club for ages, not talking to people, so I had to kick a ball around to keep myself company.”
It also explains his goal-kicking and drop goal skills. Former Terenure player Stephen O’Neill is now one of Carlos Spencer’s assistant coaches at the club. “Stevie makes me locked in for games, gets me into the zone,” says Gabriel.
Back in his senior cup days with Terenure, Gabriel informed O’Neill at training one Friday that he was going to kick a drop goal in the next day’s game, prompting a €20 bet.
O’Neill was playing in the AIL so missed the schools match, but the following Friday, Gabriel’s first words to him were: “Where’s my 20 quid?” With that he got out his phone and showed O’Neill a video of his drop goal.
“Funny moment, yeah,” says Gabriel, chuckling. “Easy money.”
As for his exceptionally long passing range?
“I think it’s just because in Austria, you don’t really have much shape, or any shape at all. We just played ball. That’s probably how I picked it up a bit, throwing the ball around with my friends. When we had games, there was just KBA [keep ball alive], KBA, and no breakdowns really. It was pretty much 15 backs and very loose.”
He played a little football in school and, of course, winter skiing trips to resorts were an annual event until he was injured on the slopes.
“Then my dad was like: ‘We have to stop skiing.’ My sister and my mom didn’t mind. They went into a spa instead of skiing because it was too early for them, and too cold.”
There are some within Terenure and Leinster who think Gabriel might ultimately be a fullback or a centre, but he has his own preference.
“Outhalf,” he says, without hesitation. “Obviously, it’s difficult enough with all the play calling and when I look at the other 10s. It’s a huge responsibility getting the team aligned. I’m not quite there yet, but I’ll hopefully get there soon enough.”
A pandemic-enforced trip home has delayed him in qualifying for Ireland through the five-year permanent residency rule until next season – the Irish under-19s fall outside World Rugby residency laws – but missing out on Ireland’s under-20 campaign last season might have been a blessing.
After a spell in Vienna, he’s back in Terenure to finish his schooldays and Dublin’s feeling much more like home.
“(Moving to Ireland) was tough at the start but it improved when Covid stopped being such a big thing and you were able to go out and see friends. I lived with good friends of mine, the Webbers, Brian and Sue, and their sons took me under their wing. My Irish family as I call them!”
Ever since, Gabriel goes to the Webbers for Sunday dinner.
Gabriel is also a trailblazer, with two Donau Wien players following his path to South Dublin. Benny Dohnalis in Terenure school and Aaron Bohan is playing for the club’s under-20s.
This season, of course, Terenure are coached by Spencer.
“When it got announced that he was coming to Ireland, I watched some highlights. He was quite a saucy baller I must say,” Gabriel admits.
“He gives all the players confidence in the game style and allows them to do whatever they want on the pitch.” But for all his own innate flair, he adds: “If you want to win games, sometimes you just have to play boring rugby. I don’t mind having to do that sometimes.”
His ambitions are not grandiose or specific. Just keep improving. Don’t look too far ahead.
After the Zebre game, he had a down week and a rare enough trip back to Vienna for “a massive catch-up” with his friends. They’ve little interest in rugby and one of them even asked if he was enjoying playing in Madrid.
“It was funny. I don’t mind. Nobody’s really that interested in rugby in Austria, only the people that play it. So, it’s like normal chat, like I have with friends that are outside rugby here as well.”
But Gabriel noticed that while in Vienna he referenced “going home”, just as he says of Vienna when he’s here.
He talks about the “class environment” at Leinster and his debt to Terenure, where he’d love to win an AIL title. “That would be great. There’s a great buzz around the club.”
And down the line there is an aspiration to also wear green.
“I think it’s still a long road and a way ahead, also because of the amount of class 10s in Ireland, but it would be a dream.”
